How to Lose Friends and Influence Very Few People

A guest post, by Robert Jensen

Bob Jensen

In the middle of an economic crisis, Dale Carnegie wrote a book explaining How to Win Friends and Influence People, which has sold tens of millions of copies since its 1936 publication.

In the middle of multiple cascading crises—economic and ecological, cultural and political—my books are a model for how to lose friends and influence very few people. As for sales, well, my books sell in the tens of tens.

I’m not complaining, either about the lost friends or the lack of influence. As I explain in It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics, I feel fortunate for the opportunities that came my way during a career in journalism and university teaching. No one need worry about me, but I am one of many people who worry about the state of the intellectual culture. My story is a cautionary tale because, while it’s important to point out the failures of political opponents, it’s just as important—and much harder—to promote critical self-reflection among comrades, who for me are on the left side of the political fence.

First, the loss of friends came primarily after my writing that critiques the ideology of the transgender movement. Unquestioned support for that movement is a given for most leftists and liberals. Because trans activists have been effective at demonizing feminist critics of the ideology, even people with left/liberal politics who are confused or troubled by trans ideology find it easiest to keep quiet.

Numerous friends and colleagues have confided to me, in private, that they don’t dare speak up even though they agree with my critique—that the trans movement’s rhetoric and policy proposals are intellectually incoherent, anti-feminist, and inconsistent with an ecological worldview. Others who challenge my writing almost never respond to specific arguments I make but rather assert that they simply want to be allies to marginalized people, as if that settles all questions. On occasion, liberal/left folks dismiss me as having strayed into conservatism, pretending that the feminist argument is indistinguishable from right-wing patriarchal arguments.

Many types of political disagreements can end a friendship, of course, especially after a sharp exchange. But what’s unique about the trans debate is how many friends and colleagues have shunned me without discussing the issue, in some cases even refusing to speak to me at all. Since those folks no longer respond to my calls and messages, I can’t know for sure what motivates them to ghost me, but I can think of three potential reasons: concerns about any public connection to me (fear of “guilt” by association, though I’m not sure what I’m guilty of); anger at the position I have taken (perhaps based on the assumption that no rational person could disagree with their views) or unease that I have expressed a viewpoint they agree with but are afraid to articulate (and so admitting that to me, even in private, would be too embarrassing).

Second, about the low level of influence. Again, I’m not complaining. Every obscure author would love to sell more books, and I’m no different. But when a writer’s message is blunt, such as an analysis of the ecological crises that many find to be too harsh and lacking in “solutions,” one has to be realistic. The bumper-sticker version of that analysis is “fewer and less”—I believe that our goals, if we want to continue the human experiment, should be a dramatically lower population consuming dramatically less energy and material resources. Except for the world’s poorest people, that means everyone—including a majority of people in the United States—would live with less.

That message doesn’t go over well on the left, right, or center. Whether folks believe in democratic socialism or the magic of the market, they rarely acknowledge the relevance of population (which we should, for starters, aim to cut at least in half) or the need to reduce the material standard of living in affluent sectors of the world (again, a good start would be cut at least in half). Instead, most everyone has their favorite technological fix (endless renewable energy, “clean coal,” carbon capture) that they believe will allow 8 billion people to consume at the current aggregate level. Even with a more just and equitable distribution of wealth, which my left comrades and I agree is crucial, we should plan for a down-powering.

Though I exist on the political margins, I don’t regret my choices in activism and writing. I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak and write without constraint, no matter what the reactions of friends or the general public. I have no illusions that my political positions will become mainstream anytime soon, but I intend to keep at it, in part because it’s important for everyone to speak honestly about our beliefs, out of self-respect.

But more important is that some people—even if it’s not the majority, even if not a significant minority right now—appreciate reading arguments they agree with but so rarely see expressed in public. One of the most rewarding moments for me is when someone tells me, “I think like you do, and it’s nice to know that I’m not alone.”

Just one of those comments takes the sting out of never making the best-seller list.

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Robert Jensen, an Emeritus Professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics from Olive Branch Press. His previous book, co-written with Wes Jackson, was An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. To subscribe to his mailing list, go to http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html.

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Robert Jensen, Emeritus Professor

School of Journalism and Media, University of Texas at Austin

home page:

http://robertwjensen.org/

email: rjensen@austin.utexas.edu 

X/Twitter: @jensenrobertw

Forthcoming: It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics (Olive Branch Press, 2024)

Subscribe to the Robert Jensen Email Updates List at http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html